What is Commercial Search Intent for lawyers?

Published by:
Deepa Kruse

Reviewed by:
Alistair Vigier
Last Modified: 2023-07-02
Are you wanting to learn about commercial search intent for lawyers? Law is a business and as a business, it is important to know what your target customer is looking for when they type a keyword into a search engine. The right approach will increase your conversion rate and top-line revenue by reaching the right target audience.
With that in mind, optimizing your digital marketing efforts to be conversant with commercial search intent is important.
Commercial search intent is a growing area of digital marketing for lawyers that’s highly relevant for savvy lawyers. There are many types of search intent among online searchers. This blog will look at commercial search intent strategies for lawyers and how they can leverage them.
If you want to improve the SEO for your lawyers, go to our homepage, and search for the lawyer’s names at your firm in the search bar. Chances are they already have a profile on our website. Make sure to claim your lawyer profiles!
Below are some things you might want to think about as you read this article:
- How to decrease your bounce rate using a proper marketing strategy
- Focusing on transactional searches with your keyword ideas
- How social media can be an important part of search engine optimization
- How to rank number one in the results pages on Google and Bing
- The best way to make people purchase products directly from your homepage
What is Commercial search intent?
Commercial intent is the search intent that users have when they are looking for something with the intention to spend money to buy a product or avail of a service. For example, if someone searches “Injury lawyers in Houston,” they are likely looking to get in touch with injury lawyers in Houston and are not just curious about injury lawyers in general.
Search engines like Google record these queries and use them as signals when deciding which ads are shown alongside search results. Because of this, you must understand how commercial intent works and how to leverage it to your advantage to increase your ROI on PPC campaigns.
According to Google, commercial searches are “made by people ready to make a purchase decision within moments.” This means that searchers look for specific details about products or services, like price and availability.
Why is Commercial search intent important for lawyers?
The reason why commercial search intent is so important for lawyers is that the majority of users who are searching for legal services are looking for specific information. They usually want to find it quickly. If you don’t find a place in their search results, you’ll miss out on potential clients.
Every lawyer has a different practice area and target audience, but they all have one thing in common: they need to drive traffic to their website to convert leads into clients. You can do this most effectively by leveraging commercial search intent.
As a law firm, you want to do more than just rank for those keywords that bring in direct business. You’ll want to rank for search terms likely to generate leads and business.
Examples of commercial intent keywords
When it comes to keywords, lawyers are in a unique position because they can use commercial intent keywords that most businesses can’t.
In other words, if you’re a lawyer, your website will rank well for “personal injury” and “criminal defence” because these are high-volume search terms with commercial intent. This doesn’t apply to most other industries.
That said, some legal keywords still have tons of commercial intent and little competition from local businesses or personal injury lawyers.
Here’s a list of some common commercial intent keywords for lawyers:
- Personal injury lawyer
- Car accident lawyer
- Injury Lawyer
Let’s say you’re a lawyer and want to rank for “personal injury lawyer.” This is a broad keyword, but it’s not very specific to your site’s offer.
Commercial search intent keywords vs High volume keywords
The difference between commercial search intent and high-volume keywords is that high-volume keywords have a higher number of monthly searches, while commercial search intent keywords have more specific, defined terms.
Commercial search intent keywords are more like long-tail phrases typically used by people looking for a solution to a specific problem or need(e.g., “Personal injury lawyers in Houston”).
High-volume keywords are broad and often generic. They can have many meanings, but they don’t tend to be as specific as commercial search intent keywords (e.g., “Personal injury lawyers”).
When you’re building a new website or revamping an existing one, it’s important to know the intent of your target audience.
Understand Conversion Intent
In this case, we’re talking about commercial search intent keywords. People use these words and phrases when they’re ready to buy something. They’re also known as conversion-focused keywords.
When you’re crafting content, one of the most important things you can do is make sure you’re including relevant keywords throughout. This is because these words have been proven to convert better than any other type of keyword out there today.
The first thing you want to do is figure out why they clicked on that keyword.
For example, suppose someone searched for “personal injury attorney” and clicked on an ad for “car accidents”. In that case, this is an example of conversion intent — the user is interested in speaking with a lawyer about their car accident case.
Use your competition as a Guide
You can find plenty of good keywords by looking at what other law firms rank on Google. You can do this by running a keyword search on Google AdWords or Bing Ads and seeing what comes up in the “Ad” section. When you click on one of these ads, you’ll see a breakdown of how much are the cost per click (CPC) and their position in the organic results.
You can use this information to get an idea of what terms people use when searching for legal help online. Just look at how many people click on each ad and figure out what those phrases mean.
For example, if you see that the three ads above yours are all about “divorce lawyers,” then it’s likely that people searching for divorce lawyers would also be interested in seeing those ads before your ad.
Leverage Google Trends
Google Trends helps you find the relative popularity of particular keywords over a certain time period. You can also see which other keywords are related to that and the geographic area in which the search took place.
It helps discover new ways to reach potential clients in your area. On the other hand, if a keyword is too broad or vague, it might not be useful for driving traffic from search engines.
To search for keywords using Google Trends, select an interest category, such as “Law Firm” or “Contractors.” You’ll then see the topic’s popularity over time. If you click on a specific day, you’ll see the keywords that were searched most often on that day.
Use a keyword tool to identify relevant terms
When it comes to keyword research for your law firm, you have a lot of options. You can use Google’s free Keyword Planner tool or Moz’s Keyword Explorer (Moz Pro users) to identify relevant terms.
However, using a paid keyword research tool like SEMrush or SpyFu to find commercial intent keywords is better. Why? Because they provide more accurate data and more precise suggestions than Google’s free tool.
These tools allow you to enter a keyword or phrase into the search bar and see suggestions for related terms or phrases. These suggestions are based on real-world data from Google searches and other sources like Bing and Yahoo paid campaigns.
Creating content for commercial search intent
When creating content for commercial search intent for lawyers, you need to create a piece that’s short, sweet and provides valuable information.
Here’s what you can do…
Write a headline that is catchy but relevant to the reader. It should describe the article and tell visitors what they’ll find on the page. For example, if you write about “how to handle an estate planning case,” your headline might read, “How to Handle an Estate Planning Case: Step-by-Step Guide.”
Write an introduction that summarizes the article in two or three sentences. Make sure it’s written in a friendly tone and doesn’t sound like a sales pitch.
This section aims to give readers an idea of what they’ll find in the article before they click through. For example, “Estate planning can quickly get complicated; here’s what you need to do.”
Write blog posts about common legal topics and issues (e.g., “What happens if my spouse dies without a will?”)
Make sure that your blog posts include useful information and links back to your website so people can find out more information or contact you directly if they need help with a particular issue.
Here are some ideas for creating ads for commercial search intent for lawyers:
Incorporate a CTA (Call to action) in the ad’s text. For example, “Need a lawyer? Call us now at 800-555-5555.”
Use keywords that describe the services you offer to help drive searchers to your website. For example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer, use words like “auto accident,” “personal injury,” “brain injury,” etc.
Include an image or video of your office or staff in action (if possible). This helps build trust with potential clients who may be researching your practice before they ever reach out to speak with you directly.
Wrapping Up
It’s important to know the difference between navigational and transactional keywords. When someone does a search query for a specific product, are they just doing informational searches? Or do they truly want to purchase something?
You should also speak to a content marketing agency about the following:
- What is the search volume for the keyword?
- Should you be promoting your brand name using PPC?
- Do you need to build individual product pages on your website?
- What is the difference between informational intent and navigational search?
- What is the SERP and what are landing pages?
- How do informational queries and target keywords work?
- What are organic search and Google Analytics?
Overall, commercial search intent keyword phrases are a valuable part of the search process for lawyers. Similar to searchers who look up general legal questions and broad topics, commercial search intent SEO phrases allow attorneys to target searchers who are ready to act.
By monitoring trends in this keyword set and integrating them into their strategies, law firms can work towards earning more leads and attracting more business over the long term.
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